Pa. College Can Exclude Birth Control From Student Health Plan, Judge Rules

If this is your first visit, be sure to
check out the FAQ by clicking the
link above. You may have to register
before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages,
select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.

Geneva College, in Beaver Falls, Pa., can offer its students a health-insurance plan that does not cover birth control, such as the morning-after pill, while it continues to challenge the new federal health-care law that requires insurers to pay for those options, a federal judge ruled on Tuesday. The Christian college is one of many institutions that have filed lawsuits objecting to the law. Judge Joy Flowers Conti of the U.S. District Court in Pittsburgh first dismissed Geneva’s lawsuit, but reinstated it last month after agreeing with the college’s argument that it had to decide soon whether it would drop its student-health plan. Judge Conti’s ruling on Tuesday does not address the college’s employee plan because the health-care law will not require employee plans to cover the types of birth control in question until January.

"While Geneva does not oppose contraception, its president, Kenneth Smith, said when the suit was filed, “It’s about the government requiring us and other religious organizations to provide services against which we have a religious and morally based conviction.”

Yes, under single payer we won't have to worry about being forced to supply birth control via health plans, because they'll be too broke to do it.

Originally Posted by Novaheart

You're already on it , aren't you?

As TX said, TriCare is an HMO. It also has most of the same problems that we've been talking about. When I was assigned to a unit in NYC, we couldn't get local providers to accept the TriCare plan, except for some seriously sketchy clinics. At FT Hood, it wasn't a problem, because we were on a post with a hospital that was large enough for the community, but at FT Belvoir, there are huge shortages of providers. It took me months to get a colonoscopy scheduled, and I ended up having to drive to Bethesda to do it. I've been waiting for over a month for my physical therapy appoinment for a rotator cuff tear, since my provider and the ortho clinic don't seem to talk to each other, and neither of them is interested in talking to me (and if an O5 can't get an army hospital to call back, imagine what an E3 goes through). A single payer system won't change that, it will just spread the misery around as it engulfs the private sector.